Back in His Ex's Bed

“She’s going to beat this, dammit,” Ben told him, trying to sound upbeat. “I refuse to accept that she’s just come back into my life to be taken from me so quickly.”

Finn nodded. Thanks to consulting Dr. Internet earlier, he now knew that the chances of Piper beating pancreatic cancer were slim. Practically nonexistent.

“Piper wanted me to thank you for agreeing to organize the wedding. She’ll be finished with her chemo and radiation treatments by then and hopefully will be able to enjoy the day without pain and the side effects,” Ben said. “We’ll be flying in earlier that week.”

Ben picked up a pen and tapped his desk with the end. “Thanks for doing this, Finn. Piper doesn’t have any family, and as you know, I can’t trust mine to do it right.”

Finn nodded, remembering that Ben’s home life had been hopelessly chaotic, with his parents either flush with cash or practically destitute. Thanks to their seesaw financial situation, Ben spent a great deal of time at Finn’s house in Beacon Hill.

“Can you send me a list of what Piper wants?” Finn asked, thinking back to Carrick’s wedding to Satan’s bride, Tamlyn, and Ronan’s marriage to Thandi, Finn’s much-adored but now deceased sister-in-law. They’d both been grand affairs, with hundreds of guests, a forest of flowers, an open bar and many hot, single bridesmaids.

“Do you know if she has any ideas about flowers or food? Music? Do you want a band?”

Ben hesitated. “Maybe, with Piper being fragile, we should keep it simple. And because she tires easily, on the short side?”

This would be much easier if Beah had agreed to help him. As Finn recalled, she’d done a brilliant job organizing Nell’s wedding, and Nell and her fiancé hadn’t had lots of money. She’d thrown herself into the role of wedding planner and sometimes acted like she was planning her own wedding.

Was that because they’d married in Vegas, with him blithely telling her that they didn’t need the hoopla of a formal affair?

He hadn’t been interested in the church and party deal. Had Beah agreed or had she wanted a fairy-tale wedding? Funny how he could remember Nell’s details but not Beah’s reaction to their own choices. Selective memory, Murphy?

And why was it worrying him now? They’d had a fun wedding, with Piper and Ben there to witness it, and a helluva weekend in Vegas. And their marriage, as she’d coolly reminded him earlier, was over.

“I’m thinking about hiring a wedding planner to help me organize everything,” Finn told Ben, rubbing his forehead.

Ben grimaced. “I tried to do that, thinking it would be the most logical solution. But everyone I called is booked solid. Apparently spring is their busiest season and nobody has the time, or the inclination, to organize a hastily planned wedding. Being in Hong Kong for so long, I don’t have any contacts in Boston anymore and have no strings to pull.”

As a Murphy, part of the most famous family in the city, Finn always had a string, or ten, to pull. But Finn also knew that Sadie, Carrick’s fiancée, had decided to postpone her and his oldest brother’s wedding because everyone and their mother got married in May and June.

“I know it’s a big ask, bud, but my hands are tied. We can’t leave Hong Kong right now. Piper needs to finish some treatments and I need to be with her.” Ben’s stress blazed from his haunted eyes and Finn could see that he was clenching and unclenching his fist.

Finn would make this work; he would. He would not let Ben and Piper down. A wedding planner was a long shot but Beah wasn’t.

Ben and Piper needed her to help him and he wasn’t afraid to push that button. They were adults; they could learn to deal with the past and their red-hot chemistry.

“Send me any ideas you have,” Finn told Ben. “And Ben... I am sorry. This is, God, sucktacular.”

It was a word from their childhood, something so dramatic and impressive that it surpassed all imagined levels of suckiness.

Ben managed a small, sad smile. “It really, really is, bud.”

Finn disconnected and pushed through the wrought iron gate and walked up the steps to the white front door to Paris’s house, wondering if Beah was inside. Damn, this process would be much easier if she’d just said yes initially. The Beah he remembered, the one he’d been married to, would’ve jumped to help him, would’ve been eager to please him. Back then, when he said jump, Beah jumped.

Finn cursed. God, he’d been a helluva jerk.

These days, she was very much her own person, a little fierce and a lot independent. And because she was now both, even more intriguing.

Finn didn’t have time to be intrigued, wasn’t interested in the concept. Especially when the one being intriguing was his ex-wife.